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by Pokeshipping_Flash



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Best Friends, F/M, Flash Fic, Gen, One Shot, Romantic Friendship, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23915077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokeshipping_Flash/pseuds/Pokeshipping_Flash
Summary: Ash is placed in a troubling situation when he’s Misty’s sole source of support.
Relationships: Kasumi | Misty/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Kudos: 14





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**Author's Note:**

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> 
> Comments are appreciated. Feel free to ask questions about this account (that aren't provided on the Ao3 profile already).

The clipboard felt extra heavy in his hands as he soundlessly approached the counter, hyper-awareness causing his hair to stick out more on end than usual as he warily eyed his surroundings.

When he’d decided he was gonna show up and surprise Misty during his second journey around the Kanto region to compete in the Battle Frontier, he hadn’t expected to walk in on her collapsed and breathing shallowly near the staircase leading to the second floor of the Cerulean Gym.

The Pokemon had all been dropped off at the PokeCenter, including Pikachu, May had said she was going to visit the cape and view some local trainer matches and see if she could strategize for the next coordinating festival event, Max and Brock were out shopping for supplies and food. The plan had originally been for all of them to meet up in the late afternoon hours at the gym and treat Misty to dinner.

Ash, having nothing else to do with his time, had eventually come to the genius conclusion that he should sneak up to the Cerulean Gym and see how busy things were. It was tough work being a gym leader, after all, and it would have sucked for their group to show up and take Misty out only to discover she was too swamped to join them…

But, upon approaching the front sliding double-doors to the familiarly dome-shaped building with the Seel sculpture encompassing the archway over the entrance, he began to think perhaps he was wrong.

He’d stared through the slightly tinted glass into the semi-dark building, wondering why everything was locked up… and saw a silhouette on the other side slouching against the bottom of the stairs down the hall.

“What’s going on…? Is that…” He squinted his eyes so hard it almost caused him to lose focus, blinked away the incoming headache, and barely made out the unique distinguishable trait that was a side ponytail, “… Misty?”

Knock, knock on the glass but she made no move to get up and unlock the doors. Brow furrowing and frown setting in, he tried once more, rapping on the glass a little harder with his knuckles. Still, the redhead didn’t move to greet her visitor or make any attempt to turn on the lights.

The original plan was clearly out the window. Now he was worried.

It had been the longest thirty minutes that Ash could remember. From finding a maintenance door on the side of the building that thankfully happened to be unlocked that he could enter through to unsuccessfully attempting to wake his unconscious friend up to dialing out for emergency responders to scrambling to scribble a note to their other friends and post it on the front double doors before locking up and leaving once more so that he could accompany Misty in the ambulance to the local hospital.

That had been a wildly overstimulating hour or two ago. Now he was forcing himself to shuffle awkwardly up to the nurses station so that he could ask a question he had never been bothered to find the answer to. Most of the staff were shuffling around, one filing, two making phone-calls, one was walking around the other side of the counter with one of those IV drip bags he’d seen once or twice before in his years on the road…

“Excuse me, dear, did you need something…?” an elderly woman in similar scrubs as the rest of the adults around him were wearing asked, a kindly smile on her wizened face as she stepped forward.

“I, uh… this part here,” the teenage boy gulped as he lifted the clipboard and pointed the source of his dilemma out to her, “I don’t understand it. I came in with…”

“Ah, you’re the boy who came in with our city’s gym leader, right? Let me see that…” She accepted the clipboard from him and followed his finger down a few inches of the first page. “My, you’ve done a pretty good job so far filling this out considering you’re not her family.”

“Well, we’ve known each other for years. Used to spend all day every day together so I guess I just… know her pretty good after all that.”

Somehow he was feeling both flattered by the woman’s acknowledgement and flustered by his own admission at the same time.

“Ah, I see.”

“Yeah, that part… What’s a primary emergency contact?”

“Well, that just tells us who to reach out to in the event that something changes with Miss Waterflower’s medical condition.”

“Changes? Changes like what?” he asked, confusion swirling amidst dark thoughts in the back of his mind.

The older nurse paused, mouth slightly agape before apparently thinking better than to confirm his suspicions and choosing a different response.

“You don’t have much to worry about. Miss Waterflower is just being given IV fluids and nausea medications. She probably won’t even have to stay overnight. She just caught a really terrible flu bug that’s going around town right now.” She paused here long enough to watch a subtle sense of relief flood Ash’s features before going on. “Unfortunately, the administration still needs the contact information for her file. She runs the gym with her sisters, right?”

“Well, I don’t really know how to reach them… I know they’re out of town though. They all take turns when it comes to the gym.”

He took the clipboard back from her, that strange foreign anxiety niggling at the back of his mind still and getting stronger with every passing second. He gave a cursory glance down the hall in the direction of her room and then back at the forms in his hand.

“Could I… I dunno, could I put my own name and number down?” Their eyes met momentarily but the ensuing embarrassment caused him to clear his throat and look away once more from the helpful elderly nurse.

“Would you be comfortable with that?”

“I… I dunno if I am. We never had this kinda thing happen to us before. But I don’t know what else to do and, like you said, I know her - I mean, of course I know Misty real well, we’re best friends, and she’s sick and needs my help so how could I not do my best to give her what she needs most now,” he rambled on, tapering off towards the end, but only long enough for his next thought to make itself coherent for his audience, “even if what she needs most is me.”

The nurse’s smile widened knowingly at the clearly baffled, unsettled yet brave teenage boy before her as he apparently made his final decision and scrawled his own contact information down on the board and then shoved it across the counter in her direction.


End file.
